FIRST EXPERIMENTS 29 
color, torpid and dull, misshapen as if half finished, with 
closed wings; but after a few minutes they commenced 
to unfold and to expand in exact proportion to the tiny 
body, which also in the meantime had acquired symmetry 
in all its parts. Then the whole creature, as if made 
anew, having lost its gray color, took on a most brilliant 
and vivid green; and the whole body had expanded and 
grown so that it seemed incredible that it could ever have 
been contained in the small shell. Though the red eggs 
[pupae] brought forth green flies at the end of eight 
days, the black ones labored fourteen days to produce 
certain large black flies striped with white, having a 
hairy abdomen, of the kind that we see daily buzzing 
about butchers' stalls. These at birth were misshapen 
and inactive, with closed wings, like the green ones men- 
tioned above. Not all the black eggs [pupae] hatched 
after fourteen days; on the contrary, a large part of them 
delayed until the twenty-first day, at which time there 
came out some curious flies, quite distinct from the other 
two broods in size and form, and never before described, 
to my knowledge, by any historian, for they are much 
smaller than the ordinary house-flies. They have two 
silvery wings, not longer than the body, which is entirely 
black. The lower abdomen is shiny, with an occasional 
hair, as shown by the microscope, and resembles in shape 
that of the winged ants. The two long horns, or antennae 
(a term used by writers of natural history) protrude 
from the head; the first four legs do not differ from those 
of the ordinary fly, but the two posterior ones are much 
larger and longer than would appear to be suitable for 
such a small body; and they are scaly, like the legs of 
the locusta marina; they are of the same color, but 
brighter, so red, in fact, that they would put Cinnabar 
